EDTECH Research

For this assignment, I began by asking myself: What do I REALLY want my students to be able to do this year on computers, and WHY?  The school I work at serves a lower-income population (2/3 of the students eat free/reduced lunch) and I have found that most kids don't have reliable computer access outside of class.  I had been thinking for awhile of using edmodo or a similar social networking and blogging site, so I decided to look at the research on these technology tools.  I was hoping to find that we could occasionally go to the computer lab as a class, post essays in the form of blogs, have some Spanish "conversation" about the results, and in this way, get more students to participate and learn!  I found that computer mediated communication (CMC) supports this idea.  It has been around for quite some time (albeit in simpler forms), and lots of language teachers have been on board all along.  I just never had a teacher/professor/colleague use such methods!  Chatting/blogging/commenting enhance the learning opportunities for a language student.  Classroom constraints such as shyness, high student-to-teacher ratios, and varying levels of language experience seem to be less important in the virtual world.  Because of this, and high student interest, participation increased in the classes using CMC.  I am hoping to experience similar results when I begin using blogging and chatting with my Spanish students this year.

In researching for this assignment, I read about many successful implementations of CMC, as well as possible pitfalls.  There were quite a few good activities in the research I found, and I will definitely be using those ideas.  I liked seeing how beginner/intermediate language-learners were using higher-order thinking skills, and in the target language, too!  Now that I know how to use Google documents and the built-in research and citation tools, I have another way of finding good ideas for my classroom.  I was really amazed with how easy and efficient this process was.  I wish it had been an option when I was in school before!  I also plan to set up a Google Scholar alert so that I don't miss out on anything new.

To read the annotated bibliography for my research, click here!

Thanks for reading!